Speaking in Tongues
In spring 2026, ICA LA will present Speaking in Tongues, an exhibition featuring an intergenerational and international group of contemporary artists who embrace the role of art as a conduit to the spiritual. Exploring and expanding notions of the sacred and the divine, the presentation includes both new and pre-existing works by artists engaging with embodied and ecstatic forms of expression, ritual, and translation. At a moment when religion is increasingly weaponized as an instrument to divide, Speaking in Tongues celebrates the spiritual as a tool for survival, kinship, and communion—centering the work of Indigenous and diasporic artists from the Global South to trace shared connections across geographies, cultures, and time.
The exhibition’s title, Speaking in Tongues, references a term commonly associated with the Pentecostal church and said to describe someone who becomes so consumed by their encounter with the Holy Spirit that they respond in indecipherable languages and uncanny movements. While language, like religion, has often been a tool of colonization and erasure, Speaking in Tongues points to mother tongues that evade capture, honoring those whose communities, native languages, and sacred rituals have been systemically riven by colonialism.
While recalling the ceremonies, altars, and scriptures common to a spiritual life, the artworks featured in Speaking in Tongues enhance our understanding of the sacred beyond—and often in contrast to—spaces like the church, temple, synagogue, and mosque. In celebrating forms of knowledge and expression that have traditionally existed outside of art historical textbooks and museum walls, Speaking in Tongues—together with its catalogue and related programs—expands and deepens the field in timely and meaningful ways that illuminate the spiritual as a method for remembering, storying, and living in this world together.
Featured artists include: Marwa Abdul-Rahman, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Ron Athey and Carmina Escobar, Belkis Ayón, Raven Chacon, Jesse Chun, Asher Hartman in collaboration with Jasmine Orpilla, iris yirei hu, Hanna Hur, Việt Lê, Karen Lofgren, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Na Mira and lexi welch, Senga Nengudi, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Aki Onda, Lydia Ourahmane, Fazal Rizvi, Carlos Villa, and Luis Fernando Zapata.